My little guide is all about Windows Gaming, and I really mean Gaming on Windows 10 only! There exist tons of outdated guides and myths when it comes to "game tweaking" but they are mostly wrong, so I wrote my own guide to show the things which really do make the difference!
- Do not use any
all-in-one tweak tools/programs or scripts, it's not worth it. - Do always a backups of your current Windows 10 state. I recommend Macrium Reflect or (FOSS & cross-platform) restic.
- There is no Voodoo tweak or
regtweak.awesome.regwhich increases your OS/Game performance like 50%. - Do it yourself and don't be lazy - use brain.exe and do not copy tweaks from the internet!.
- Security / Virtual Machine (VM)
- OS Hardening
- Game only tweaks or modifications, you can check nexusmods for this
- Tweaks usually do not magically increase any in-game FPS. There are specific circumstances in which the OS can be tweaked to improve or stabilize the game smoothness, when you for example cap your FPS to get rid of the overheap which otherwise might have result in an in-game stuttering.
- Tweaks should not be randomly applied via a "universal" script or tool because the OS itself changes over time and the configuration is different for each user. This is the reason why this project don't provide a general "myawesomescript.ps1" script.
- Tweaks are defined by: "Latency improvements", "Engine related improvements/workarounds", "FPS workarounds/fixes", "CPU usage" "RAM usage", "OS workarounds", "Driver workarounds" or "Network latency optimization". All of them can have an impact on the OS, game or network performance which means the OS/game might runs more stable (smooth) or on higher fps (e.g. if overclocked or optimized).
- Possible performance related problems should be reported directly to Microsoft, nVidia, AMD and/or the Game Develop Studio to address them so that everyone gets the same benefit. In terms of fair play it is better.
- A perfect OS does not need to be tweaked, the same goes for games but this will never happen due to several things e.g. bugs, different PC configurations, engine related problems and many more circumstances.
- I do not claim to be the "tweak master" but I'm a long time experienced gamer and had the chance to get an insight into the Windows kernel (Windows XP - 7).
- BIOS Configuration and Tips
- OS (general)
- Hardware
- DirectX
- Drivers
- GPU AMD
- GPU nVidia
- GPU and Shader in Games
- Monitor
- Known Myths
- Mouse
- Network
- RAM
- SSD
- Retro Consoles
- Sound
- KB issue
- Tips to improve PC performance in Windows 10 by Microsoft
- Scheduling, Thread Context, and IRQL
- Inside memory management
- Cache and Memory Manager Improvements
- Win 10 Guide (redacted.tv) (outdated)
- How To Tweak Windows 10 For Gaming (back2gaming.com) (questionable recommendations)
- Gaming / PC Optimization / Useful Links & Apps (n1kobg.blogspot.com) (questionable recommendations)
- Youtuber: FR33THY Guide (video) (lots of claims with no evidence, interesting questions not getting answered or are off-topic)
- Mike Martin's Gaming tweaks (mikemartin.co)
- Can You Get More Space Or Speed From Your SSD? (tomshardware.com) + SSD Optimization
- Do we really need swap on modern systems? (redhat.com)
- Better Tear Control Policies, Game Capture, and GPU Improvements (docs.google.com) + Official Thread (forums.guru3d.com)